“Now wait a minute. I seem to recollect you telling Katie a couple of hours ago that you were up there checking out different things you might wish to import to your shop, such as Apache blankets. You said nothing with regards to bringing goods to Godspell,” Honor pointed out suspiciously.
“We sold them all. That is where we got that money from that we showed you,” Valencia added nervously. Honor tilted her head and narrowed her eyes.
“Might I inquire as to the location of your wagon?” she asked, watching them closely.
"We left it with a carpenter. Its axle was damaged, so we had to buy Alverez a horse to ride. We were to return next month to pick it up. Please, please, Miss Wilde, do not let the actions of this man cast doubt on Valencia and me. We shall handle this," Marquita walked over and slapped Alvarez hard.
“We hired you for a job, gave you money when you needed it, and then you tried to steal from our new friends!” The woman pulled her gun and put it to his forehead. Katie gasped, and Honor watched with interest. “I should teach you a permanent lesson!” Marquita said viciously.
“Marquita, no! Attempted thievery is not worthy of a death sentence. Send him on his way,” Valencia cried out to her sister. Marquita slowly lowered the gun. She walked to the man’s horse and took his canteen, then emptied it.
“Go now. Feel blessed we let you keep that horse. Leave! Before I change my mind. Let the hot sun be your punishment, and do not show your face around San Sidero again.” The man, grunting, mounted his horse and charged away from the group.
“You have my sincerest apologies. We had no idea Alvarez was of a corrupt heart,” she told them. Honor thought about it a moment.
“Excuse us for a minute,” Honor said and led Katie off to the side.
“Look, Honor Elizabeth, I know what you are gonna say,” she began, and Honor couldn’t help saying what Katie expected.
“That this was a bad idea, falling in league with strangers. Indeed, that is what I was going to say,” Honor told her.
“The Melendez’s seem more upset about what happened than we are, seeing as how it was our money he was fixing to steal,” Katie pointed out.
“He would have got it too, but for an old trick of Cattie’s. Our ranch hires lots of temporary help on cattle drives. Usually, these are people we do not know. On her first drive without Daddy, one of the help stole the money she had been paid for the cattle on the way back, right out of her saddlebag one night. Ever since she had a bell sewn on her saddlebags, so she can be tipped off if someone is messing with it. Cassandra suggested she fix all of our saddlebags up similarly. It worked for us today, so we would not be caught with our pants down," Honor said.
“Well, we kind of were,” Katie pointed out. Honor stared at her for a long moment, and then they both broke up laughing. Honor put her hand on her shoulder.
“I sincerely hope you do know what I am conveying to you, yes?” Honor said to Katie. Katie nodded.
"I understands you. But I believes them when they say had no idea about Alvarez," Katie said.
"We are rightly stuck with them, so we must endeavor to make the best of it. Come on. I want to get to that waterhole before the sun sets," Honor said, and Katie nodded agreement. The pair returned to the two other women. Honor nodded to the sisters and mounted Nina, patting her neck. She snorted and stamped her feet. The horses were going to love the watering hole. They all began riding, and Honor thought she saw Marquita send a shifty look to her sister. Honor sighed again, resigned. She would have to keep an eye on the Melendez sisters.
“If you don't talk, son, I'll have to try you on robbery charges," The judge said laying down the law to the frightened young thief.
“But, Judge, he’s a young man! There might be a strong and true reason for what he did. I know that can happen from the years of my brother forcing me to take part in his crimes,” Marisol appealed to Lijuan’s father.
“Yours was a special case, Marisol. As for his youth, well, the law doesn’t make excuses for young folk no matter how callow they may be. If he’s old enough to steal, then he is old enough to take his punishment. He is only making it worse by not talking,” Whip said as they heard a knock on the front door.
"You all wait here. I'll go to the front office and see who's there. Lijuan, keep trying to get him to talk," he said as he left for the front office. When swinging the front door open, he was treated to the sight of two strangers, one with a badge.
“Morning, Judge Wilde, is it? Word on the street is that with no sheriff in Alamieda, this is the place to turn to for legal matters. I am Morgan Spooner, Deputy Sheriff of Palomino County. This here gentleman is Drake Dunovan,” the man said. The sheriff was a thin man wearing a black hat to match his clothes. Dunovan was stocky in a blue suit with a bright red hat that Whip found to be most distracting.
“Palomino County? Must be important business to bring you boys clear across the territory to Alamieda,” he said a little surprised.
“It is, Judge, we’ve trailed a killer into your area. The jasper we believe is hiding out nearby,” Dunovan said.
“Who is he?” Whip questioned as his eyes narrowed.
"Ben Bradley! He was traveling to Clearwater with a wagon train. He got into an argument with the sheriff, and a few hours later the sheriff was found dead, shot in the back," Donovan answered.
In the back office, the two women and the young man heard what was being said through the door Whip had left slightly open. The captured thief bolted to his feet and stormed towards the door.
“Hey now! Where are you going?” Lijuan asked, caught by surprise. She bounded after him out to the main front room followed by Marisol.
“It’s a lie! He isn’t no killer. My Pa didn’t kill no sheriff!” The young man exclaimed with fury on his reddened face.
“Ben Bradley’s boy, eh?! That begins to explain things. Now let’s hear the proof they have against your father,” Whip said turning to the sheriff and his friend.
"The best proof in the world. A dying man's words. The sheriff himself named his killer, Ben Bradley. I heard him, and so did Drake," Spooner affirmed.
“Yup! The sheriff asked us to get his no-account murderer and we will! By thunder!” Dunovan said fiercely.
"Need more proof? Look at this clipping. It names Bradley as a man who rode with Jesse James!" Spooner added as he plucked a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it over. As he opened it up Lijuan and Marisol crowded around Whip and caught a look at the newspaper article. An illustration showed a couple of gang members being led into a jail.
“That there is Bradley! One hundred percent!”
“That doesn’t prove he is a killer. He quit the gang. But he done his time for having been riding with them in the first place, but once he got out he was done with law breaking!” Lijuan admired the young man’s defense of his father.
“I’ll bet the boy knows where his father is hiding,” Dunovan said and rushed to the young man and seized his arm, quickly bending it behind his back.
“Let me go!” The young man hollered in surprise as Lijuan moved towards them.
“Tell me!” Dunovan “Tell me where he’s at,” he was shaking Bradley now, not holding back any force.
"Let him go!" Lijuan cried as her hands latched onto his coat, yanking him backward off the youth.
“Don’t meddle, woman!” Dunovan snarled reaching for his gun. Lijuan took a step back and drew her arm back and shoved it upward, the palm of her hand striking Dunovan’s forehead with all the strength coiled up in her muscular arm, knocking him backward with a gasp of pain. The sheriff stepped between them, eyeing Lijuan with surprise at her use of a fighting style he had never seen before.
Dunovan was sputtering mad, “Consarn you, Judge Wilde … you gonna let some laundry woman here rough up a white man like that?”
With a voice so icy that it could have frozen over the Rock River in mid-July, Whip crossed his arms. “She’s not here to collect laundry. This is Lijuan
, my daughter.”
Both men looked at each other bewildered before Spooner cleared his throat.
“Sorry, about all this. Drake’s temper got the best of him. You’ll understand when I tell you that the sheriff was his best friend. We’ll ride on and try and pick up that killer’s trail,” the sheriff said, and he pushed Dunovan in the direction of the door. Moments later they had mounted their horses and trotted away down the dusty street.
“They’ll kill Pa! They won’t give him a chance to explain,” The young man said fearfully.
“You ready to tell us your name, son?” Marisol asked.
“Jeff, the name is Jeff,” he revealed as his eyes cast downward, his heart sick with worry.
"We understand that you were taking supplies to your father, Jeff, but we can't help you or him unless you talk to us and take us to him," Lijuan told him. The man looked down. His fear was showing in his youth.
“You … you won’t believe him either,” he said almost resigned to his father’s fate.
“We won’t let anything happen to him if he’s innocent. That’s a promise. Now will you tell us where he is before they find him?” the judge asked. Jeff struggled with it for a moment and then sighed, giving in.
“He’s a hiding out in some old mining camp near Sundown Mesa. I was hoping I could bring him food and more guns, so he could defend himself against those two if it came to that,” As he fell silent, Whip swept his gaze from the young man to his daughter. "Lijuan, hitch up the coach and bring it around front, we are off to Sundown Mesa." With a great deal of satisfaction that she had something to take her mind of the ugliness with David the night before, she was more than happy to get swept up in this distraction and quickly hastened off to do as asked.
It was not long before they were heading off to Sundown Mesa. Lijuan drove with her father next to her on the bench. As they progressed, they didn't know they were spotted by the sheriff and Drake Dunovan who were conducting their search along a ridgeline that rose above the road to Sundown Mesa.
“There is no sign of him coming this way, Drake,” the sheriff said irritably. The heat of the new day was ratcheting up and not getting results were only fueling the fire of his misery.
“Our luck may be changing, Spooner, look!” Dunovan said pointing to the coach moving off in a different direction. “Do ya figure they know more than we do?” Dunovan asked the lawman.
"Bradley's son could have talked by now. Let's follow them," he decided, and the two began trailing the coach from a reasonable distance and out of sight along the ridgeline. They were predators stalking their prey.
***
As the Wildes approached the cabin at Sundown Mesa, shots rang out, and dust erupted a few yards ahead of the coach. The horses stalled nervously, and Lijuan and her father scrambled off the carriage and away from the cabin they were approaching.
“Stay right where you are!” a voice shouted from the cabin. Lijuan wondered why the man hadn’t shot one of them. His line of sight had been perfect for it.
“Bradley, Ben Bradley? We want to talk to you!” Lijuan shouted.
"I'm not talking to anyone, now ride on!" he shouted from the cabin. If it was a hunch or pure instinct, she was not sure what, but an inner voice was telling her there was nothing to fear from this man. She hesitated only for a moment, and then Lijuan set her gun on the bench seat of the wagon, along with her hammer.
“Wait here, father. I am going to try something,” she told him and walked around the coach towards the cabin with her arms out from her sides, showing she had no weapon.
“Lijuan, what are you doing?” Her father hissed as she walked closer to the cabin.
“I’m proving he isn’t a killer. If I’m right, he won’t shoot me,” she called back to him softly.
“If you’re right?! Get back here, Daisy!”
Never would she have disobeyed her father as a child, but she was a grown woman now with a mind of her own, one she had made up, so she forged ahead.
“Bradley, we want to help you! Your son is safe in town and told us where to find you!”
“Jeffrey told you?” he shouted back. Lijuan reached the door unharmed and opened it, seeing the man.
“Yes, now lower that weapon so we can talk,” she said as he beckoned her inside the cabin.
“What’s the use? No one will believe me,” he said dejectedly. The judge came into the cabin then to stand next to Lijuan. He gave his daughter a disapproving look for the worry she had caused him and then faced Bradley.
"I am Judge Wilde, and this is my daughter, Lijuan. We'll believe you if you can convince us you didn't kill the sheriff of Palomino County," Whip said. Lijuan knew he was annoyed with her for the risk she had taken, but she had been sure, from his actions, that Ben Bradley wouldn't shoot her. Bradley looked up at them. He had a gaunt face and brown hair with matching eyes.
"It won't be easy to prove. Jeffrey and I left Missouri with a wagon train of settlers. Outside of Palomino, we were stopped by Spooner and Dunovan. They made us pay a toll! I paid under protest and rode on to complain to the sheriff in the nearest town. He was angry when he heard about the illegal toll. He said he would check on it, and that was the last I saw him. The next thing I knew the sheriff was dead, According to one of the settlers who was late catching up with the train due to having his wagon’s axle being repaired in town Spooner was wearing now wearing a sheriff’s badge, and that he was coming after me,” Bradley said despairingly. Lijuan could almost feel the weariness in his bones.
“Why did you run away?” she asked.
“I once rode with Jesse James. It was in the paper. I quit and turned myself in when I realized James wasn’t out to correct wrongs, he was in it to cause more. Did my time and got out hoping to start a better life and this happens on the way to it. I figured my chance of a fair trial was next to nothing if my past were to be brought up. I never killed a man, you gotta believe me,” he finished telling them. Unbeknownst to them, Spooner and Dunovan had crept up outside the window listening to it all. Spooner chose that moment to enter the cabin with his gun drawn followed by Dunovan. “Reach for the sky, Bradley!”
“Well, wasn’t that a pretty speech, from a murderer!” Dunovan added. They turned to face the men as one.
“We owe you a lot, Judge. You captured the killer for us.” Spooner crowed. Lijuan could see the anger in her father’s face as the two of them escorted Bradley out of the cabin as the Wildes followed.
“Put up those guns, now!” Judge Wilde demanded of the sheriff and Dunovan. The sheriff looked surprised, but Lijuan wasn’t.
“Whose side are you on, Judge Wilde? We’ve got our man, and we are taking him back to Palomino to pay for his crimes,” Spooner said.
"He's not going anyplace. He is in my jurisdiction, and we are taking him into custody," The judge told the two men firmly to their displeasure.
“How are you gonna do that? You ain’t even got a jail!” Dunovan asked.
“Not true, my offices were once the sheriff’s office back in the day, when Alamieda had one. The cell is still there, so we’ll keep him there,” the judge told them.
“You have no interest in this case!” Spooner declared in frustration.
“I have plenty of interest in it. There are legal papers to be filled out before I turn him over to you. By morning you can have him,” the judge said in a tone that would brook no argument. Lijuan added her own two cents as she scooped her hammer off the bench seat of the carriage.
"My father is done talking on this subject. I suggest you show some respect and stand down a might or your next conversation will be with us," she told them with a glare, twisting the hammer around in her hand menacingly. Whip motioned to her, and she put her hammer back onto her belt. The two stayed out of their way as they got Bradley into the coach and then they climbed up to the bench to make the journey back to Alamieda.
The carriage rocked along the well-worn trail towards town, and Lijuan glanced over at her father. “
What do you make of that story about Dunovan collecting tolls?”
“There is definitely more going on here than meets the eye. Somehow, we will get to the bottom of it. Right now, I want to talk about you taking that risk before! What were you thinking?!”
“Bradley could have gunned us down on approach but didn’t. Plus, his son seemed adamant that he wasn’t guilty.”
“A man’s love for his father might not be the best thing to bet your life on.”
Silence fell over them. She could have continued to argue, but she didn't like to quarrel with him. Still, her father didn't seem quite ready to put the matter to bed.
“There are days, young lady, where I swear the spirit of your mother takes a hold of you, given the stuff you do.”
Lijuan’s hair whipped around as she snapped her neck in his direction. This got her attention in a way that no other topic ever could. The times he spoke of her mother were so rare that it always startled her when he did.
“So, she was headstrong? That’s what you are saying, isn’t it?”
“Headstrong doesn’t even begin to cover it. She was reckless too, taking chances just like you did earlier. Barreling right into things without a thought to the consequences.”
Her face fell as he spoke. She wished to hear the good things about her … such as the tender times they had shared marooned on an island off the Chinese coast. Instead, this is what she got from him. He was looking at her now. One of his arms slipped around her shoulder.
“Your mother was also the most dangerous woman I have ever known and certainly the bravest and that is saying a lot considering the courageous daughters that I have. You are your mother’s daughter through and through.”
At that Lijuan melted and Whip took the reins from her, and she leaned against him feeling like a little girl again when all it took was a few gentle words from this man to make her feel all better. At least for the ride back, all her thoughts of the unpleasantness between her and David faded away as her head rested on her father's shoulder.
The Reaper 0f The Rio Sangre: Special Edition HBH Version (Half Breed Haven Book 10) Page 10
